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Quite Literally a Hot Mess: Contretemps Over the Phoenix GA 2012

I have just heard that two members of our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly Planning Committee have resigned. The article is here.

I’m going to comment on this issue from the perspective of a clergyperson who cares about the work of our General Assembly but who neither knows, nor intends to intensively research, the extreme specifics of our planned 2012 “Justice General Assembly.” My semi-ignorance is intentional: it is because I deeply believe that insider politics are the scourge of the institutional Church. I believe that very few people care about insider politics, or have the privilege of enough spare time to stay current with the e n d l e s s conversation it generates. My observation is that the vast majority of participants in any faith tradition desire the church (in this case, the Unitarian Universalist Association of independent congregations) to be community of love and service, prayer and study, and the nurturing of all souls.

Hence, I will keep my observations brief and, I hope, fairly simple.

The individuals and congregations devoted to immigrant justice issues in Arizona are admirable, and I fully support their good works.

However, given that the purpose of our General Assembly is to do the work of the Association, and that the “work of the Association” can only interpreted by the most creative institutional contortions as “spending the week partnering with local Arizona organizations in the work of immigrant justice,” this gathering should stop calling itself a General Assembly. The commitment to having 2012 be a “Justice GA” (a new animal for our tradition) was voted on last year by the GA delegates, which makes it legitimate by congregational polity. What has subsequently happened, however, is that the other congregational-polity aspects of this General Assembly (most specifically, the role of the General Assembly Planning Committee, a group elected by the delegates) have been eroded by what is being perceived as a take-over by the UUA Board.

So this is a polity mess that is unfortunately being played out as a personality and identity issue, with accusations of power abuse flying from one side and accusations of bad faith (eg, people who don’t support this “Justice GA” aren’t good, faithful Unitarian Universalists because they are obviously not committed enough to justice work and witness) flying back from the other side. That’s really a shame.

Continue reading “Quite Literally a Hot Mess: Contretemps Over the Phoenix GA 2012”

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Welcome Back, Pigeons!!

The HILLS are alive, with the sound of PeaceBang!!

Well, WHAT FUN.
I abandoned this blog about two years ago so that I could focus on finishing my Doctor of Ministry degree. That mission is accomplished and I graduated on May 21 in a funny hat and with many beloved friends and parishioners present. Thank you for your expressions of support and congratulations throughout the process. I am now the proud owner of a big whomping dissertation called “Covenanting: Ancient Promise and New Life For the Contemporary Church” which I think deserves to be published but you know, I just don’t feel like doing the work to get it to publishers. Maybe later, after I’ve had a few beers and thrown some books down a flight of stairs to release the tension.

The Facebook and Twitter phenomena took off right after I stopped blogging here, so I have been carrying on a lively discussion over at Facebook (as PeaceBang), which I will continue to do. I love the discipline of having to condense my blatherings to a few pithy phrases, which means that I will be blogging here on a less frequent basis than I used to. As I remarked to a crowd of Unitarian Universalists earlier this week at our General Assembly workshop on ministry and social media, I am verbally manic, so this is a health practice for me. No, it really is. If not for all of you I might be in a rubber room somewhere pontificating to the walls.

So this blog will be for the lengthier blatherings. It will be for podcasts and for a nice long coffee or cocktail break, as opposed to the shots of espresso we’re all tossing back as we stand at the Facebook bar. The PeaceBang blog may occasionally even be as long as a dinner party or a retreat as we converse at luxurious lengths about issues facing the Church, the soul, the world, and “RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 4,” or whatever tickles our fancy. I have such a ticklish fancy, as you know!

My dear friend and partner in crime, the Rev. Scott Wells, has continued to advise me and to construct this blog. I really couldn’t do this without him.

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Death In the Room

As a pastor, you spend a lot of time passing around the chewing gum in the parking lot with the Grim Reaper, having that “meeting after the meeting” that all church folk are familiar with. I have actually had dreams where I am dancing with him, waltzing beautifully in a large, silent ballroom and feeling romanced and loved by this hooded, faceless Presence. Sometimes I see Death as the Spider Woman, sexy like Chita Rivera in that webbed gown she wore in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and I can tell when she’s hanging around a hospital room or bed. She wears heady perfume and smokes thin little cigars, and you can faintly detect their odor under all the other human smells.

And sometimes Death is a stern presence, tall, gaunt and impatient, dressed in a Puritan clergyman’s vestments and tapping his toe, pursing his lips and wanting to quote some more from the Bible — injecting the Word of God into your heretical 21st century nonsense. I always stare him down until he backs against the wall and promises to remain quiet. “This isn’t your gig, Reverend.” He nods and sighs his acquiescence, but his perfect posture never flags.

Now and then Death is a grandmother Jesus, rocking and knitting, looking up and glancing at the suffering one and humming a soft little song to help her baby along. She is calm while everyone else is frantic. She smiles with ultimate understanding but never rises from her chair. This isn’t her work, it is ours, and she is content to be a supportive witness while we attend to it. Even when the last exhalation has occurred and the dying one is finally still, she still doesn’t get up, just tilts her head and checks to see everything is alright, and goes back to her knitting and her humming. She will be the last one out of the room, and she will draw the curtains when everyone is gone.

The Death I have never met is the one who will be there for the person who, after a decade of heroic, exhausting and constant medical intervention to keep herself alive, has decided that she can no longer endure the pain and is stopping treatment. When she told me of her decision over the phone this afternoon, I felt this Death in the room behind me, a strong, young, taciturn farmer with some kind of big rake in his hand, wearing overalls and sturdy boots and a hat to shield his face from the still-strong October sun. He clomped through the house leaving bits of dirt on the floor, and the screen door slammed behind him as he went back outside to the fields. It is harvest time, after all, and there’s work to do.

I wanted to run after him, to shout that he should clean up after himself, that he had left dirt on my floor. More than that, I wanted to pick a fight with him, really, to land a good punch to his jaw. I wanted to pummel him right on the bib of his overalls, to stomp on his boots with my own. I wanted to tear off the sleeve of his worn cotton shirt and make a hankie for myself and for her — something we could hold in our hand and cling to — and leave him bruised and sorry for what he’s taking.

I know what he would say. “Don’t take it personal, ma’am. This isn’t anything you need to fight me about.” And then he would give me a kindly look and again leave the house, this time closing the screen door more carefully behind him.